How learning to code can help your small business

Coding isn’t just for computer geeks – it’s a language that most businesses will end up using in the future. Learning it now can help your company to grow…

Websites, apps, e-commerce, mobile phones – they all need code. Code is the building blocks of the internet and without it your business would be stuck.

But ask any small business owner if they can code and they’ll probably shake their head. Yet there are so many reasons why learning even the basics could change the whole way you do business…

Analysing customer data
Whether you morally agree with it or not, data collection and analysis is where it’s at in the future.

From simple data like time spent on websites, to in-depth analysis of social media trends, using data correctly will be important to all businesses in the future, no matter how big or small.

Learning about coding means you can install pieces of code that can better track and record this data, giving you an edge over your competitors. Not only that, you can use the data recorded to adjust your site to better suit the needs of your customer. Which leads us onto our next point…

Our websites are one of our biggest marketing tools and should be adaptable and agile, responding to changes in the market, consumer trends and current events.

But if you don’t know how to code, you’re stuck with being only able to adjust the basics. Once you get a few basic lessons in coding under your belt you’ll be able to keep your site constantly fresh and updated, whether that’s changing the overall style, making sure keywords are up to date or deleting redundant pages to make it more streamlined.

Tackling online problems
When your website goes down you need to get to the root of the problem fast. Especially if you’re an e-commerce site where every minute of down time is lost business.

But without any coding skills you’re not only reliant on someone else to come in a fix it when they have time, but also have to pay for the privilege.

Basic coding skills might not give you everything you need to fix the problem, but it can give you enough knowledge to know where the issue is so you can brief a software engineer and know roughly how long and what it should cost to repair it.

Automate processes
Once you’ve mastered the basics of coding, you can take the step up to the next level.

Becoming a coding master opens lots of doors – one of which is to automate processes in your company. These could be anything from changes to the staff payment systems to automatic shipping on e-commerce sites.

These automations can help make your whole company much more efficient and thus save you time and money.